Using an inquiry-based, technology-enhanced approach, this one-week seminar will provide the content background to support teachers in creating safe spaces for exploring sensitive topics within the classroom. Participants will engage in creative and collaborative thinking about methods and approaches to teaching the Holocaust and other difficult topics such as bullying, prejudice, social injustice, and state-sanctioned forced removal and genocide.

• Join like-minded colleagues to explore strategies for promoting resilience and social justice utilizing powerful primary and secondary sources
• Work with Holocaust survivors, Japanese-American internees, and community activists ? Collaborate on developing standards-aligned (Common Core State Standards) lessons ? Explore technology tools for taking student writing and voices beyond the walls of the classroom

Who? Teachers grades 4-12 – across grade levels and disciplines When? June 20-24, 2011, 8:30 am – 4:00 pm

Where? The seminar will take place simultaneously at CSU, Chico (Northern California WP) and UC Davis (Area 3 WP), connecting via videoconferencing. Choose the location that works best for you.

Credit? Two units (30 hours) of continuing education credits are available for completing the June seminar. An additional unit (15 hours) of continuing ed. credits may be earned by participants who complete the requirements for the May 2012 follow-up session.

Cost? No cost!

Interested in finding ways to recognize and build upon the strengths of your young writers? Be a part of a community of writing teachers as we seek out new ideas that foster a love of writing in our students. Partner with us as we explore and discuss best practices and new ideas in current writing research. Oh and we’ll do some writing, too, because we believe the best teachers of writing are the ones brave enough to pick up the pencil themselves. Join us. You’ll be glad you did and so will your young writers.

Presenters: Dale McMahon & Alicia McCauley – Teachers in the Enterprise Elementary School District & Teacher Consultants for the Northern California Writing Project

Cost: $100 Checks/Purchase Orders should be made out to CSUC Research Foundation. NCWP Teacher-Consultants are $75. The cost includes a book and registration fee for the NCWP Writing Symposium on 4/2 at Shasta College.

Registration Deadline: 1/14/11

Dates & Location: 2/5, 2/26, 3/12, 3/26. All sessions are from 9am-11am and will be held in the Boulder Creek computer lab located at 505 Springer Dr., Redding. Participants are expected to attend all sessions. 1 unit from CSU Chico can be purchased for participants who attend all 4 Saturday sessions, the writing symposium and complete 1 additional hour of study.

Please R.S.V.P. to Alicia McCauley at amccauley@eesd.net

Register Online

Download a flyer with registration form for this professional development series.

As teachers, we often talk about our best practices; we identify research/inquiry questions; we make plans for gathering data, yet despite our best intentions, we rarely finish our projects.  What stops us?

• Time
• Collaboration
• Motivation/Incentive
• Purpose/audience

This project is designed to address these problems.  Let’s conduct inquiry projects that allow us to describe ourselves instead of allowing others to describe us and our work.

Cost? Free to Writing Project TC’s and only $50 for colleagues. 3 CSUC professional development units available for purchase.

Contact Suzanne Linebarger for more information!

Email: slin2@aol.com

Phone: (530)872-1593 or (530)570-6791

Read.  Living the Question.

Collect. A variety of supplemental articles illuminating your work.

Participate. In threaded discussions online.

September 24-30

Participants will identify a question, identify means for gathering data, and collaborate online. Begin reading Living the Question.

October 1-2 (Fri. 4pm – 6pm) (Sat. 9am – 2pm)

Writing retreat. Large group meeting (Chico & Siskiyou locations TBD). Debrief Living the Question.  Relate it to your work and brainstorm for additional resources.

November 5-8

Post current discoveries, ask questions, and get a jumpstart from colleagues in case of pre-holiday fatigue!

January 14-17

Post additional discoveries, and with support from colleagues, adjust your work in meaningful ways.

March 11

The Writing Retreat Without the Retreat!

End Project: Small groups meet together to analyze data, make inferences with support from colleagues, pose additional questions, and develop a research-based claim.

April 2

Research Symposium: A Chico/Siskiyou Collaboration –  SHARE!

Pine Ridge School celebrates National Writing Day

On Tuesday, Pine Ridge School celebrated the National Day on Writing, starting with a morning assembly with Principal David Burdine and Academic Coach Betsy Amis, who read a book to their audience of K-5 graders, “If You Were a Writer,” by Joan Lowery Nixon. Though the book focused on developing ideas for stories, the individual classroom lessons were not about creative writing.

Suzanne Linebarger, a third grade teacher at Pine Ridge who serves as Associate Director for the Northern California Writing Project, went classroom to classroom teaching the principles and craft of writing.

The lesson was “Exploring the Craft of Writing from Inquiry to Practice.”  The “inquiry” part was to help students become active readers, increase the power of responding to literature, and demonstrate making a claim, supporting it with proof and using summarization effectively.

The “practice” part explored elements of writing such as examining text, word gathering, the author’s purpose, a writer’s craft, a summary, a claim, and proof. Students also learned about good claims (contestable, compelling, complex, and coherent) and effective conclusions (which provide new information for the reader, demonstrate the writer’s new understanding, reflect on the topic, and connect facts with opinion).

Students learned that when a writer makes a powerful claim, the purpose of the piece becomes clear both to reader and the writer. When a writer has a claim, the details become proof and the conclusion becomes a demonstration of new awareness and understanding, rather than a restatement of the obvious.

The students also learned about genre. Though it covers categories of writing like fiction, poetry, and drama, genre can also refer to everyday uses of language such as eulogies, editorials, proposals, arguments, menus, lab reports, manifestos, rules, emails, and more.

And there are a lot of purposes for writing, students discovered. Students learned about writing in response to things they have read, writing to inform, predict or persuade, writing to take notes, remember things, solve problems, writing for class sharing, reflective writing and technical writing for math and science, developing procedures, for recipes, and more.

To help organize their thinking and encourage writing, Linebarger introduced the students to Northern California Writing Project “thinkbooks,” notebooks designed to improve student’s motivation and engagement with their writing. The thinkbooks are supposed to be used throughout the day, any time writing can be used for learning—but there is no grading, no erasing, and never help with spelling.

The idea is to help students learn to compose well-written pieces. According literature from the National Writing Project (a professional development organization for teachers helping to incorporate more writing in their classes), writing is the gateway to success in school and beyond. It helps students read, solve problems, and understand concepts in every part of the curriculum. Writing is also the “currency” of the new workplace and global economy.
But it’s not a skill that can be learned on the spot. Writing is complex and challenging, even for the most accomplished writers. Now, Pine Ridge students are celebrating writing, and practicing.

The Northern California Writing Project is pleased to announce the 2009 Summer Writing Festival, an exciting, week-long writing camp for Northern California children.

• When: July 27-31, 2009, 9 am to 2 pm
• Where: CSU, Chico
• Who: Students entering grades 3-7
• Cost: $200 per student (scholarships available for students in need)

Download the flyer and registration information (pdf file) ]]> http://norcalwp.org/wp/2009/05/04/2009-summer-writing-festival/feed/ 0 http://norcalwp.org/wp/2009/02/04/the-northern-california-writing-project/ http://norcalwp.org/wp/2009/02/04/the-northern-california-writing-project/#comments Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:09:45 +0000 pkittle http://norcalwp.org/wp/?p=183

The Northern California Writing Project is a professional development organization whose purpose is to support teacher leadership in the teaching of writing.

The Northern California Writing Project offers programs in a wide array of forms.

• Invitational Summer Institute: The centerpiece of NCWP work with teachers, the Summer Institute develops teacher expertise and leadership in writing pedagogy
• Symposia on the Teaching of Writing, K-College: Participants in the Summer Institutes present their work and findings to the public during two annual symposia, one in Chico and one in Siskiyou County.
• Inservice: Programs designed specifically tailored to schools’ particular needs and interests, and provided at the school site
  • Teaching Writing in the 21st Century (Elementary)
  • Improving Student Academic Writing (Secondary-College)
• Continuity Programs: Advanced Institutes and other programs designed for NCWP Teacher-Consultants, focused on current issues in the teaching of writing.
  • “First Thursdays” is an ongoing continuity program featuring rotating subjects and lively conversations
• Open Programs: Institutes and other programs offered to all local teachers, usually offered at the CSU, Chico campus or other institutes of higher education
  • The Winter Conference on the Teaching of Writing
  • Improving Student Academic Writing (Secondary-College)
  • Teaching Writing in Northern California (K-College)
  • Saturday Series
• Programs for Students
  • Young Writers’ Festival (for elementary-aged students, offered each summer)
  • Writing the College Essay (for entering high school seniors, offered summers)

The Saturday Series: Breathing Life into Literacy

This series of workshops is designed for all classroom teachers (K-College) on topics chosen to help motivate and engage teachers and students of all ages in purposeful literacy learning. Let’s put the sparkle back into teaching and learning!

• Location: CSU, Chico Campus
• Registration: follow the registration links below the workshop descriptions, or call 898-5322
• 1 unit of continuing education credit available to teachers completing 3 or more workshops ($60 fee)
• Email ncwp@csuchico.edu or call 898-5322 for more information

Full information available: see Saturday Workshop Series.

Please join us for a day focused on blogs and blogging. We will explore blogging as a genre by reading some different bloggers’ work, examine possible ways of using blogs in educational settings, and then get our hands dirty by creating and using blogs of our own.

Please email ncwp@csuchico.edu with questions!